Rouge Interent Provider Closed - Bad for Ad Industry?

FTC shuts rogue internet firm.

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it has ordered the shutdown of a company called Pricewert LLC, described in a complaint filed in San Jose, Calif., federal court as an Oregon-based shell company run by "overseas criminals", operating out of Belize and running many its illegal operations out of servers in Silicon Valley.

Pricewert, which operated the "Triple Fiber Network" or "3FN," wasn't the type of Internet service that average consumers would see or sign up for. Instead, the service was advertised "in the darkest corners of the Internet" and was targeted at criminals who want to put malicious Web sites online, but need the servers and bandwidth to do it, according to the complaint.

This is great news for web surfers. It is to the benefit of us all to get these criminals off the net. At least this should remove some of them. Hopefully this is the start of a more serious effort.

Only people it may hurt is the Ad companies that served up the ads to drive traffic to their sites. I have always opined that the majority of the ads that are displayed on the interent are done so for nefarious purposes. Take an IQ test lately for example? In return you give up personal info. What do they do with it and why are they willing to pay people to get you to their site, so they can give you a free service? There is nothing good behind it.

I predict that the whole interent advertising field undergoes a major metamorphisis in the not so distant future. I can't believe that some sites still use popup ads. They do nothing but annoy people nand I seriously doubt the advertisers get any value unless of course they are used for nefarious purposes..